The app is a snitch

 In the last month or so, Lyft has started giving me little tidbits about passengers before I accept the ride. "Has tipped on 72% of rides." "Is usually waiting for the driver." "You gave them 5 stars last time."

My guess is that this is all I being done to nudge drivers into taking a higher percentage of rides (while, of course, paying less for those rides, because Enshittification Is Everything Now)... but the reality is that the passengers who behave worse than others are going to find themselves in a spiral of worse service.

And while that seems fine and justified on some level, on another... no. 

Not to get too philosophical about this, but no one is 100% of anything. Some of the worst rated passengers I've ever had turned out to be just fine, but were victimized by a past driver. Some of the best rated passengers seem to get there purely from the power of buying their way out of bad behavior. 

There's also this: judge not, lest ye be judged. Ridesharing is something of a microcosm of society on this, where rating every experience is somewhere on the spectrum of useless because AI slop and disregarding, or hyper-vigilance since the rating can end your income. 

Meanwhile, this: both apps are now doing full-blown invasive telemetrics to determine how "good" of a driver you are. This is determined by harsh braking, speeding, etc. But here's a spoiler on that... if I really want my harsh braking scores to go down, it's easy. I just drive later in the day, when there is less traffic to inspire harsh braking. Or I run more yellow to red lights, since the app isn't bright enough to understand when protecting myself from tickets and collisions is the cause, rather than aggro tailgating and unsafe driving.

This is all, of course, a beta tech problem, and eventually the data will catch up and course correct, but in the meantime?

Everyone probably just needs to give each other a break. 

If a passenger is a little late, stinky or unpolite, I need to chalk it up to the rest of their day, and not a need to punch down on the driver. If your ride isn't quite to your preference (depending on the passenger, I'm either too slow, fast, chatty or robotic)... maybe look in the mirror and question the importance of the complaint.

Or why, exactly, we want to live in a surveliiance state in the first place.

Rider Behavior

 It's quarter to three in the morning, and I'm about $20 away from hitting the daily goal. It's been a busy shift, but not a very lucrative one, so it's been a long day. I get a ping in Princeton for a 20 minute ride south, no surge, that will get me fairly close to goal and home. Maybe even goal with a tip. Hope springs eternal.

The location is near a hotel, but the avatar that denotes the location of the passenger's phone isn't there. It's at a spur road off Route 1, about a tenth of a mile away. I drive to the avatar, pull over to the side, hit the hazards and roll down the window. It's not a particularly safe spot to stop, but the world works differently in the middle of the night for drunk people, and you accommodate from past experience.

My presumed fare is sitting off the side of the road against a property fence, some 100 feet away, and inconsolable. Appears to be a white woman, likely college age. Her companion, similar age male, who I presume called for the Uber on her phone, tells her the Uber is here. She won't move, won't stand, demands her phone, and screams about a person who has, in her opinion, shown herself not to be her friend due to her actions. It's very much a raging fit, at a volume that doesn't bode well.

He pulls out his own phone, calls someone else, tells them she won't get in the car. 

This lathers, rinses and repeats for several minutes.

What I want to tell her, but will not because esoteric and off-putting, is that every person on the earth is descended from a very small group of humans who refused to die after a massive volcanic eruption killed all but a few hundred of us, huddling in caves for years, starving and scared, until it was safe to go one.

What I want to say, but will not because rude, is that I am doing a job, and until you get in the car, I am doing it for free. At a time when I can not do jobs for free, obviously, because I'm out in the middle of the night, by the side of the road, waiting for someone to stand up and get into a car.

What I want to do, but will not because not my place, is tell her that when you make your problems the problems of other people (let alone complete strangers and professional service workers)... that's a tell. About your boundaries, your empathy, your competence, your privilege. It's not a good tell.

I've waited three minutes. If I wait another two with her not getting in the car before I cancel the ride, I get a little less than four dollars. And if she actually gets up and gets in the car during this time, I get 20 more minutes of this, for no surge price, and likely no tip.

I check the app. There's surge price nearby. 

The first rule of rideshare is a simple one: get home safe. I

The second rule of rideshare is also simple: we are doing this for money. A ticket from a cop for stopping here would ruin the entire day of work, or more. Not driving a fare at this hour, when fares are scarce, is also not advisable. Let alone fares that might pay surge price, or, well, get in the car.

I check the app for cancellation reasons. Here's the one: rider behavior. I cancel the ride, drive away, as the male yells for me not to. Surge price is activated, but no other requests come for the next 20 minutes, and I call it a night, resolving to...

Work a little more the next day to cover the shortfall.

Which I should be doing now, instead of writing this.

Forward. Honoring the stubborn ancestors.

Somehow, I did not believe Royal Rich

 The pick up is in New Brunswick, middle of the day, senior living building. An older gentleman with a walker makes his way to the car. It turns out that I'm taking him a casino about 45 minutes south in another state, so I make a little conversation. His game is poker, which I also play. We discuss various rooms in the area and what he likes and doesn't like about the game, and I give him the usual tips on saving a few bucks on rideshare rides, and why the price keeps changing and getting worse for him.

During the ride, he mentions how, in the room he's about to go play, he once got Royal Flushes in Texas Hold-Em on consecutive hands, and that ever since that blessed day, he's been called Royal Rich by the dealers there.

Now, the odds of hitting a royal are something like 650K to 1, and in decades of play, I've seen two live. Paid one, hit the other. Two in a row, according to the Internet query I just made while writing this post, are 422 trillion to one. But he's insistent, 82, and the passenger. Who am I to tell him he's wrong?

I drop him at his preferred spot and he tells me... the tip will be in the app.

There is, of course, no tip later. But you already knew that, yes?

All it takes is one

Twice in the last week, friendly passengers have asked if I carry a weapon while doing this. When I replied without a direct response, but cited the number of rides I've given without need of one, they decided they had the answer they needed, and I must be crazy. "All it takes is one crackhead," said one passenger, a retired police from Florida, as if said crackhead had a rideshare account in good standing, a phone, and the desire to make trouble for someone doing them a service while carrying no cash. But if you only ever see people on one of the worst days of their lives, I guess it makes that kind of behavior feel like the default.

And after all, all it takes is one.

Two days ago, the pick up is in Trenton, four middle to high school boys, ten minute ride while they see if they can get a rise out of me with asks like "How much for this car?" and "Pull over, I'mma gonna shoot someone", along with comments about who's gay for who and so on. One of the four is apologizing about the conduct of the other three, but they are all laughing and it's a nice day out, and the first rule of rideshare is get home safe, so I let it all wash over me and drop them at their point. A block away, I give them 3 stars so that I don't have to do that again anytime soon, and get back to my day.

This kind of ride happens every few weeks or so on average, usually with drunken teens at night, and I've learned over the years not to take it personally. It's just going to happen sometimes, and it doesn't really mean anything. 

An hour later, as I'm toggling back and forth between the apps, Uber won't open and tells me that my account has been suspended. So for the next day, I'm working just Lyft, which costs me some money and gets me into a mental rabbit hole. Has Uber been listening to my conversations? Some passengers have that set for rides, and while I try to remember to be circumspect when they do that, it's easy to forget if someone engages in conversation. 

Did I say something to someone that offended? Is my style of work (bouncing between apps, trying to maximize ROI) no longer acceptable to Uber? Is this their way of getting away from a less profitable driver in a car that, while spotless, is 10+ years old and small? You're working by yourself for so many hours, and there's nothing to stop you from just ruminating.

The next morning, Uber is still not working, so I start the shift as Lyft only, with the resolution to see if I can get through the entire day while not saying any word that is not 100% necessary. That lasts for the better part of four hours because money, and it's in the middle of another quiet ride that my phone rings. Uber security, calling to follow up on a complaint that got my account suspended. I mention the teens, and the complaint came shortly after I dropped them. 

The report that Uber is investigating claimed that I was sexually aggressive, touching passengers, and trying to get personal information, with some particularly soft-porn details that don't seem terribly feasible in broad daylight with witnesses. After laughing, I explain the unlikelihood of any of that (monogamous, straight, 9 years, 36K+ rides, near 5.0 record, a substitute teacher, homeowner, father, husband, college graduate, etc.) and the likely motivation of the people filing the report. The investigator agrees and notes that this all just protocol, and asks if I have a dashcam camera (no, don't want to live in a survalliance state), or if I've ever engaged in any of a number of obviously questionable acts (again, protocol to ask). My Lyft passenger, hearing this from the back seat, shakes his head and says "People are crazy" a lot.

Several hours later, the account is reinstated, and I go back to my usual methods.

So, yeah, all it takes is one. 

One false report to get your account suspended and cost you money and good will.

One group of kids behaving badly to make you think you have no option but to self-censor. 

One incident to make you think about complying with constant survalliance and a loss of privacy.

And later, one good passenger, conversation and tip to make you forget about living your life in fear, because living a life in fear just isn't worth it.

Because when you do that, you get to spend all your time in the presence of someone you don't really like. 

Mostly because they are just so goddamned afraid of everything...

End times titty bar

The pick up comes from a motel near a truck stop and is going over state lines. Rough white guy, middle aged, portly, bearded, trucker hat. He's impressed by the amenities and wants to talk. It happens.

Several minutes in, the passenger asks me about my relationship with Jesus, which usually means he wants to talk about his relationship with Jesus, and how these must be the End Times. We do that while I defuse and distract, and after a good word or three, he's decided I'm a wise man, and it's time to go deep into his life, which means a confession that he's... going to the titty bar. 

Because he just wants to smell it, you see, and those ladies are working, and is that so wrong? I know enough to weigh in with "Judge not, lest ye be judged", and he's wondering about whether the titty bar will have an ATM (seems likely, though not free).

Two minutes later, after a pump fake for a 7-11, I'm dropping him off, and he's greasing my palm with a folded 20, 10 and 5 -- $35 cash tip for a 15-minute ride. He later tips an additional $9 in the app. And as he looks me in the eye and thanks me for the ride, he says, "God bless America."

Ayup...